Irredeemable
by pipistrelle
Summary: Afterlife angst! Jude is forced to reflect on his life, his family, and Cara.


**Irredeemable**

In life, I was never the most reflective person. In Liberation Militia, you can't keep worrying about whether what you're doing is right. To me, the Cause was always the most important thing. You have to believe in it, or you're finished. You can't think about the people you kill too much, or you'll be overwhelmed and no good to anyone. But now, there's plenty of time to think. An eternity. All the reasons for doing what I did have started to fall away, and all that's left is guilt. I can't get away from it.

This isn't what I expected, the afterlife. No God in the form of an angry old Cross man, jabbing me with a big black finger and casting me down into the flaming pits of Hell. Just me alone, in an ordinary little living room like the one in the house I grew up in. It's strangely quiet. There's no television here, but a there's a coffee table and a few threadbare chairs. Sitting here on the slightly sagging sofa with a bottomless cup of tea is comfortable enough, but in truth I would prefer physical pain; anything to take me away from myself.

_She's _still in my head. Too late. Why am I always too late? It was only on the point of death that I realised what I couldn't admit to myself, but had known all along: my soul was forever wed with Cara's. It was against Cara that I had measured every woman I'd met since, and I had found every other woman wanting. I need to find her, but at the same time I know there's nothing I can do; to apologise would be monstrously inadequate.

Cara: kind, loyal, passionate, brilliant, killed by a sick nought boy who couldn't even love something without destroying it. I was young when it happened (no, it didn't _happen_, I did it, _I did it_) but in the almost twenty years I lived after that I learned nothing. Since her death my soul has been in stasis. And because I killed her wherever she is she too is stuck with me, her graceful generous soul forever joined with my underdeveloped, crumpled, deformed one. It's as though Rumplestiltskin managed to carry the princess away and make her his after all.

They say that having a Cross woman is every nought man's fantasy, that we're dangerous, deviant, can't be trusted. I suppose I can't argue with that, not now. But we're not all like that, I want to shout out loud. We're not all like me.

I never had sex with Cara, though. We would have done, that night, had I not…How did I ever let her get to me like that? I couldn't let myself love her, but I couldn't walk away either. Cara doesn't even know my real name, but she knows me more deeply than anyone else and that was why I hurt her.

I think of Callum. Callum. I love him and still I hate him. My good reflection, taunting me by showing me who I could have been. Where I brought death, he brought life. I killed Cara; he had a daughter. Two McGregor boys, both sprung on Cross women. How ironic. He loved that bitch Sephy in a way I could never let myself love Cara, even though she was infinitely more deserving.

And then there was Lynette. I had locked away the guilt I felt for her death in a secret drawer in my heart, but that, like everything else, was coming out now. I had goaded her and goaded her until she was so upset she didn't see the bus coming when she crossed the street. I never wanted her to die, but all I've ever been good at, it seems now, is dischord, destruction, death.

I knew I was going to Hell, I've known it all my life, even before I planted a bomb that killed eight people when I was just seventeen. I've lost count of the Crosses I've killed, and they're God's favourite children. Once Mum told me, Lynette, and Callum a story about a man who could only escape Hell if someone else prayed for him. I don't think either of them remembered it for very long afterwards, but I've carried it with me; it became the story of my life. I think back to that day, the three of us as children. Even _she_'s given up on me now. She let me die because I'd finally gone far enough, had finally let her see what was so obvious to everyone else but that her mother's love had protected her from, that she'd given birth to something hideous. I tried to lie to her, to protect her from what I'd become, but she found out in the end. She said she would always love me, but does anyone really deserve to be loved so unconditionally?

I think I hear a ticking clock, which is weird because there's no time here. The chairs are comfortable and the tea will never run out.

No-one can reach me here.


End file.
